My Take on MLB 2K10

It rules.

MLB 2K10 is a vast improve­ment over the last ver­sion of the game I pur­chased two years ago. The rea­sons are sim­ple. It’s tak­en the same approach that Mad­den took in sharp­en­ing his name­sake video game: made it hard­er and more realistic.  The approach at the plate no longer requires the hack and slash tac­tics in ’08; you can actu­al­ly look at pitch­es and maybe even draw a walk. I’ve drawn exact­ly one walk to date, with Ben Fran­cis­co as DH no less! The dis­ci­pline required to have good at-bats is a dra­mat­ic change from ‘08’s com­i­cal home run der­by, where hav­ing con­sec­u­tive mul­ti­ple home run games with Pedro Feliz or Geoff Jenk­ins was­n’t out of the question.

The pitch­ing con­trols? Meh. I don’t see the big diff. This is part of the prob­lem with mar­ket­ing sports games today. At this point, every­one knows that the real dif­fer­ences from year to year are few. How do you gen­er­ate excite­ment about a game whose main improve­ment is that the ros­ters are updat­ed? Even the ven­er­a­ble Mad­den fran­chise has suf­fered a decline in sales!

Oth­er points:

  • I love the MLB Today fea­ture, but wish it would replace the fran­chise mode alto­geth­er. Why not merge the two experiences?
  • I hate unlock­ing things. Why not emu­late those clas­sic Mad­den games and just include the clas­sic teams (or sim­u­lacra there­of) and sta­di­ums in the game? If you’re a fan of sports games, these sorts of loy­al­ty gim­micks don’t real­ly work out. I want to play as the Phillies (or hell, the A’s) in all of the parks they ever played in, in my choice of uni­forms. Can I get an amen from the guys at Uni Watch?
  • The art of steal­ing bases became more dif­fi­cult in the new game. It’s a lot to try to man­age an at-bat while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly pulling the trig­ger (lit­er­al­ly) to steal sec­ond. It’d be dif­fer­ent if you were play­ing as the first or third base coach, but you’re not.

Apart from those details, I love every minute of the game. Last night I pulled off a thrilling 10 inning come­back win over the low­ly Pirates. The game end­ed on a walkoff homer by Ryan Howard, the team gath­er­ing around home as he plat­ed the win­ning run. It was amaz­ing. MLB 2K10 is a huge improve­ment over pre­vi­ous efforts and I look for­ward to play­ing the 2010 cam­paign with the Fight­in’ Phils.

Posted on by J T. Ramsay 0

Mark Linkous R.I.P.

I was lucky enough to see Sparkle­horse dur­ing that fate­ful CMJ fes­ti­val that got past­ed togeth­er in the wake of Sep­tem­ber 11th. He per­formed in front of a gigan­tic Amer­i­can flag the own­ers of the Bow­ery Ball­room hung at the back of the stage. He seemed real­ly uncom­fort­able with that. I’m sure at least some por­tion of the audi­ence did, too. I know I did.

I’m sor­ry to say I don’t remem­ber much of the set. It was­n’t par­tic­u­lar­ly long. He opened with ‘Home­com­ing Queen,’ but for­got the words. The audi­ence jogged his mem­o­ry by chim­ing in. He played the hits pas­sion­ate­ly. I’m remind­ed that he cov­ered GBV’s ‘Smoth­ered in Hugs,’ which you can lis­ten to over at Chrome­waves. It was amazing.

I have to admit that I expect­ed some of the guests from ‘It’s a Won­der­ful Life’ to join him onstage. I don’t know what I was think­ing. I had only been in NYC for a year and I tru­ly believed that that sort of thing might hap­pen. He did­n’t tour much. He was in New York. What else was Nina Pers­son doing that night?

I did­n’t think much of ‘It’s a Won­der­ful Life’ at the time. I had fall­en in love with Vivadix­iesub­marine­trans­mis­sion­plot and Good Morn­ing, Spi­der over a few trou­bling sum­mers, work­ing jobs I hat­ed while sav­ing mon­ey for school in the fall. Those songs were anthems to my ears, the per­fect sound­track to any­one who’s shuf­fling along in the twi­light of job­less­ness and underemployment.

I’m not sure why I nev­er real­ly got his next album, It’s a Won­der­ful Life. The guy made a liv­ing off of wild­ly uneven albums, but some­thing about this one did­n’t quite con­nect. I loved songs like ‘Piano Fire’ and ‘King of Nails,’ but some of the cameos just did­n’t work for me. I shelved it.

I haven’t lis­tened to Sparkle­horse much since. I went back to those records after news broke of Link­ous’ death and found them to have the same amaz­ing qual­i­ties they did when I first lis­tened to them almost a decade ago. I can still pic­ture myself mak­ing a 120 mile roundtrip com­mute in my decrepit Dodge Shad­ow, blast­ing Good Morn­ing, Spi­der at top vol­ume and it still makes me shiver.

Posted on by J T. Ramsay 0

Up in the Air

My friend Eric tweet­ed late last night,” ‘Up in the Air’: polite­ly mis­guid­ed lib­er­al fan­ta­sy, or egre­gious­ly clue­less and down­right offen­sive in parts Piece Of Shit?”

It made me think of the clip above. I watched Up in the Air ear­li­er this week and won­dered what the fuss was about. It tries to do a lot, but I’m not sure it accom­plish­es very much. It’s boil­er­plate romance-gone-wrong fare, freight­ed with a mes­sage about how our pri­or­i­ties are wrong and some­how the hor­ri­ble econ­o­my will help us fig­ure out what’s impor­tant. Sor­ry, Mr. Reit­man, but the notion of mak­ing lemon­ade does­n’t work when you can’t afford the lemons in the first place.

For peo­ple who’ve nev­er been laid off, it seems like the stuff dreams are made of. You’re freed from a job you prob­a­bly hat­ed any­way; you get some sev­er­ance, or at least unem­ploy­ment; and you can reeval­u­ate things and move on. Which is the log­ic that informs this amaz­ing­ly hilar­i­ous Onion arti­cle I read way back in Octo­ber 2003, when I was about six months into what would be a 2+ year under­em­ploy­ment bid.

I felt that the tes­ti­mo­ni­als that came at the end of the movie from folks who’d lost their jobs in the recent down­turn echoed the hope the Oba­ma cam­paign gave them. Their opti­mism and their reliance on fam­i­ly to sup­port them in their time of need were both very poignant, but Reit­man con­ve­nient­ly leaves out all the sto­ries from the past few years about folks who’ve lost their jobs and have then gone on to vio­lent attacks on their work­places and communities.

Is Reit­man the new W.D. How­ells, that is, some­one who puts a smi­ley face on real­ism? There’s but one “dead end” in the movie, the woman who fol­lows through on her threat to com­mit sui­cide. Every­one else just goes on their mer­ry way, for bet­ter or worse. Whether it’s find­ing a new job, or hav­ing an affair, or just run­ning away from it all thanks to a near­ly infi­nite sup­ply of fre­quent fli­er miles, every­one can find an escape from the hum­drum, if not out­right happiness.

I think it’s that that peo­ple dis­like about Reit­man’s movies. The sim­ple-mind­ed­ness. The breezy dia­logue. The beau­ti­ful peo­ple. The whole ‘resilien­cy of the human spir­it’ trope, which some­times just seems a lit­tle more real­is­tic than the way it’s pre­sent­ed here. Reit­man’s youth­ful, priv­i­leged world­view makes it dif­fi­cult to see things dif­fer­ent­ly than he does, that is, through a lens of infi­nite pos­si­bil­i­ty. The prob­lem is that Reit­man’s skies, like those in Up in the Air, are sun­ny and cloudless.

Posted on by J T. Ramsay 7

Still Recovering from February



Snow, orig­i­nal­ly uploaded by hhan­ni­gan.

Sor­ry for not hav­ing writ­ten more often last month. I feel like I’m still men­tal­ly dig­ging out from all that snow. This week has erased almost all mem­o­ry of 24+ hour snows, but I still har­bor a fear that we may get nipped again before March is out.

In the mean­time, bask in the glo­ri­ous sunshine!

Posted on by J T. Ramsay 0